Highlights of the AUGUST 2012 Issue

BACK TO SCHOOL:

Students at Le Moyne College will
not be entirely surprised when
they return to campus this fall to
the newly renovated LaCasse Dining
Room — they have been following the
progress of project on Dining Services'
Facebook page. ...

As the project gets closer to completion,
the updates will stop. “At some
point, we are going to shut it off so they
get that 'Wow!' when they walk in,” said Jim Ruoff, general manager of Dining Services with Sodexo, the campus foodservice provider.

Dining Services has a short time to
get that “Wow!” “We served our last
meal to the students on Tuesday evening,
May 15,” said Ruoff. “Demolition
began on the 16th. We have 108 days to
complete this project. It is a very aggressive
timeline, especially when we decided
to do some major flooring changes.
We are going to be going to tile floors,
which we weren't originally planning on
doing. We had to add an extra week into
this project.” ...

When students at Middle
Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro
return to campus this fall,
they will have a new $78 million,
200,000-square-foot Student Union
— and some major new food options.

“The university broke ground on
it three years ago,” said Brent Davidson,
resident district manager with
Aramark, the campus foodservice provider.
“It is going to be a centerpiece
for the middle part of Tennessee.”

The Student Union will feature four
different food areas. The first is a food
court with seven brands — a mix of
national and proprietary. “Our national
brands are going to be Dunkin' Donuts and Panda Express,” he said. “The number
one draw we feel will be a Popeyes
Fried Chicken. This is a fried
chicken campus. We feel like it is
going to be a big hit.”

The national brands will be
joined by some proprietary Aramark
brands. Gourmet salads will
be offered at The Happy Tomato. ...

At 18th Annual
Tastes of the World
Culinary Conference
at UMass

Hundreds of collegiate chefs from the U.S. and Canada gathered
at the 18th Annual Tastes of the World Chef Culinary Conference
at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) — Amherst from June
10-15 to learn from culinary experts on simple food and healthy eating.
In addition to healthy eating, food trucks and local sourcing were hot
topics at the conference.

“The 2012 Chef Culinary Conference will be remembered as an
event filled with the passion of cooking simple food, serving healthy
choices and how we as operators can continue to offer food that tastes
good and is good for our customers,” said Ken Toong, conference
chair and executive director of Auxiliary Enterprises at UMass. “Chef
Roy Choi stressed the importance of providing healthy food at K-12
schools and the difficulty in changing the system in place; however,
change is happening at many colleges and universities and this can
have a trickle-down effect. Today's students will be
tomorrow's parents and will be agents of change in
the food system in K-12 and the wider community.
The food truck movement will also continue to grow.”

The event featured several knowledgeable speakers,
an American Culinary Federation (ACF)-sanctioned culinary competition and hands-on sessions with small
group production workshops. ...